Boots and Roots

The Boots and Roots route reveals the beauty of the agricultural adventure.
Discover through the landscape the hidden stories and ties between agriculture,
innovation, trade and governance.
Boots and Roots will take you from the eastern border of The
Netherlands through landscapes shaped by last Ice Age, waterways and meadows, the Hanse cities, farms and castles, to the North Sea.

Cultural context

The Netherlands is the second largest world’s exporter of agriculture products in the world. This fact is nothing short of a wonder when you realize that only three
percent of the Dutch population (total population 16,947,904 in November 2015) using 2.3 million
acres of land (more than half of the country’s area) is for a great deal
responsible for the export.
Yet, agriculture production has been shaping not only the Dutch
economy but also the Dutch landscape. The Dutch landscape has been subjected to
ongoing changes and modification. Economical and technical developments,
changes in policy, social and cultural perception are all inscribed in the
landscape.

Despite the image of The Netherlands as a civil and democratic nation,
in which the nobility is practically an anachronism, the Dutch nobility as
recent research shows, has played a major role in shaping of the rural areas,
Dutch politics, and economy.
While historians wrote on matters concerning the parts of Western
Holland with its cities, the so-called Randstad, industrialists, ship owners, and merchants, historical developments point out
the significance of the countryside in Dutch history.

Around 1750 Dutch merchant capitalism is
in the doldrums. It is the start of a
process of de-urbanization and a shift of the economic centre of gravity from
the Republic to the agriculture in the east of the country.
"After 1750 The Republic becomes a
netexporter of agricultural products. The major customer was England. The
Netherlands has in fact facilitated the English Industrial Revolution, as it
produced the food which was necessary in order to extract labour from the
rural economy.
Who profited from the agricultural boom?
The landed aristocracy and the peasants of the Republic. The nobility played a
role, never yet known in Dutch history. "

Aristocratic landowners prospered from the
rapidly rising rents, and most farmers were able to pay the rents due to the high
agricultural prices. The nobility attained powerful positions in the civil service, and
were interfering in the economy of their community.
In the eighteenth century, urban patrician
families were increasingly adopting an aristocratic lifestyle. Rich families
from Holland and Gelderland bought after 1750 more and more land around their
houses, in order to be able to represent themselves with a rural lifestyle as the
noble.
Until well into the nineteenth century,
agriculture remains the backbone of the Dutch national economy. A notable elite
of large landowners is then the ruling class of the Netherlands.

Highlights

DEDEMSVAARTWhat did the Dutch do when they needed transportation routes? They dug canals. Towns like Amsterdam and even New York, USA, were built on that principle. A concept so natural here, that a single nobleman had built a 40 km long waterway to enhance the family trading business. The hands-on economy and spatial planning at the end of the eighteenth century, and why that spirit is deeply embedded in the Dutch DNA.

PHOTO THEO BAART

MATARAMThe wavy ground of the “rabats” matches the curly tree-tops of the “berceaus” on the once lush Mataram Estate. This is a long lost dream, and an echo of the eighteenth century’s newly rich who looked for a pastoral paradise. Now a land to explore. Look well to unveil the original scenery and it’s exotic stories.

PHOTO THEO BAART

LEMELERBERGDid you know that there is an actual, perpetual, threat of Dutch landscape turning into a sandy desert? And yet, it makes sense to cut hectares of forests in order to restore a desert, like here on the mountain Lemelerberg. You thought the Netherlands was low? With pieces of land floating in water? Climb these 78 meters above the sea level and change your perspectives.

Route Parts

1 Hoek van Holland – Delft

2 Delft – Gouda

3 Gouda – Mijdrecht

4 Mijdrecht – Huizen

5 Huizen – Harderwijk

6 Harderwijk – Apeldoorn

7 Apeldoorn – Holten

8 Holten – Almelo

9 Almelo – Nordhorn

NLroute are seven landscape routes through the Netherlands and is an innitiative of Pnina Avidar, Tatjana Trzin, Saline Verhoeven, Lennart Graaff and Irma Bannenberg. The Pilot for Overijssel is made possible by Provincie Overijssel and Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed. We work together with the NBTC Holland Marketing. Many people have contributed and made this pilot possible. We thank them all for their contribution.